Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman (ebook and pdf reader TXT) đ
- Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Here you have human beings, unquestionably, but what we were slow in understanding was how these ultra-women, inheriting only from women, had eliminated not only certain masculine characteristics, which of course we did not look for, but so much of what we had always thought essentially feminine.
The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out. These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection. As to wild beastsâ âthere were none in their sheltered land.
The power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly laud, was theirs of course, raised to its highest power; and a sister-love which, even while recognizing the actual relationship, we found it hard to credit.
Terry, incredulous, even contemptuous, when we were alone, refused to believe the story. âA lot of traditions as old as Herodotusâ âand about as trustworthy!â he said. âItâs likely womenâ âjust a pack of womenâ âwould have hung together like that! We all know women canât organizeâ âthat they scrap like anythingâ âare frightfully jealous.â
âBut these New Ladies didnât have anyone to be jealous of, remember,â drawled Jeff.
âThatâs a likely story,â Terry sneered.
âWhy donât you invent a likelier one?â I asked him. âHere are the womenâ ânothing but women, and you yourself admit thereâs no trace of a man in the country.â This was after we had been about a good deal.
âIâll admit that,â he growled. âAnd itâs a big miss, too. Thereâs not only no fun without âemâ âno real sportâ âno competition; but these women arenât womanly. You know they arenât.â
That kind of talk always set Jeff going; and I gradually grew to side with him. âThen you donât call a breed of women whose one concern is motherhoodâ âwomanly?â he asked.
âIndeed I donât,â snapped Terry. âWhat does a man care for motherhoodâ âwhen he hasnât a ghost of a chance at fatherhood? And besidesâ âwhatâs the good of talking sentiment when we are just men together? What a man wants of women is a good deal more than all this âmotherhoodâ!â
We were as patient as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine months among the âColonelsâ when he made that outburst; and with no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave usâ âsave for our escape fiasco. I donât suppose Terry had ever lived so long with neither Love, Combat, nor Danger to employ his superabundant energies, and he was irritable. Neither Jeff nor I found it so wearing. I was so much interested intellectually that our confinement did not wear on me; and as for Jeff, bless his heart!â âhe enjoyed the society of that tutor of his almost as much as if she had been a girlâ âI donât know but more.
As to Terryâs criticism, it was true. These women, whose essential distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call âfemininity.â This led me very promptly to the conviction that those âfeminine charmsâ we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinityâ âdeveloped to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such conclusion.
âJust you wait till I get out!â he muttered.
Then we both cautioned him. âLook here, Terry, my boy! You be careful! Theyâve been mighty good to usâ âbut do you remember the anesthesia? If you do any mischief in this virgin land, beware of the vengeance of the Maiden Aunts! Come, be a man! It wonât be forever.â
To return to the history:
They began at once to plan and built for their children, all the strength and intelligence of the whole of them devoted to that one thing. Each girl, of course, was reared in full knowledge of her Crowning Office, and they had, even then, very high ideas of the molding powers of the mother, as well as those of education.
Such high ideals as they had! Beauty, Health, Strength, Intellect, Goodnessâ âfor those they prayed and worked.
They had no enemies; they themselves were all sisters and friends. The land was fair before them, and a great future began to form itself in their minds.
The religion they had to begin with was much like that of old Greeceâ âa number of gods and goddesses; but they lost all interest in deities of war and plunder, and gradually centered on their Mother Goddess altogether. Then, as they grew more intelligent, this had turned into a sort of Maternal Pantheism.
Here was Mother Earth, bearing fruit. All that they ate was fruit of motherhood, from seed or egg or their product. By motherhood they were born and by motherhood they livedâ âlife was, to them, just the long cycle of motherhood.
But very early they recognized the need of improvement as well as of mere repetition, and devoted their combined intelligence to that problemâ âhow to make the best kind of people. First this was merely the hope of bearing better ones, and then they recognized that however the children differed at birth, the real growth lay laterâ âthrough education.
Then things began to hum.
As I learned more and more to appreciate what these women had accomplished, the less proud I was of what we, with all our manhood, had done.
You see, they had had no wars. They had had no kings, and no priests, and no aristocracies. They were sisters, and as they grew, they grew togetherâ ânot by competition, but by united action.
We tried to put in a good word for competition, and they were keenly interested. Indeed, we soon found from their earnest questions of us that they were prepared to believe our world must be better than theirs. They were not sure; they wanted to know; but there was no such arrogance about them as might have been expected.
We rather spread ourselves, telling of the advantages of competition: how it developed fine qualities; that without it there would be âno stimulus to industry.â Terry was very strong
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